The Value of Survival
by northcaroline
Summary: "As glad as she is to be part of this team, as proud as she is to be part of the Bishop legacy, she is also so mad at them." In 2036, Etta struggles to forgive her parents.


Title: Legacy

Summary: As glad as she is to be part of this team, as proud as she is to be part of the Bishop legacy, she is also _so_ mad at them.

Rating: T

A/N: I am very excited to see 2036 and everything, and to spend time with older Etta, but I also have a lot of questions for Peter and Olivia, who basically abandoned their child. While I know they had no real choice as the Observers closed in on them, I am not sure that Etta should accept that of the people who were supposed to raise her. This is that exploration.

* * *

At first, there is just joy.

Etta is overwhelmed by the relief of having her parents back, of finally not being alone, of having a _team_ of Bishops standing right behind her. When they find her mother and the two women wrap their arms around each other, the memories come flooding back to Etta in waves. Her father smells exactly as she remembers – like mint toothpaste and gunpowder – and her mother's touch is achingly familiar.

The first night that the Bishops are back together, they sleep sitting against the wall in an abandoned warehouse, somewhere in New Jersey. Etta allows herself to be comforted by her parents' embrace, falling asleep between them as her mother runs a practiced hand through her hair. She can hear them whispering over her head as she drifts off. Her father laughs, and her mother shushes him: "Let her sleep," she says.

"Henrietta Bishop," he sing-songs. "Sweetest girl in all the universes."

She's spent so long as Etta, or Agent Knight, that it's strange to hear someone call her by her full, secret name. _Henrietta Bishop_ sounds like a different person in his voice, and he says it with such love that she feels stronger from it. She falls asleep to the sound of their voices, wondering how she could have ever forgotten this feeling.

Reality soon sets in, and Etta becomes frustrated with this new authority. She's been on her own since she was four, a Fringe agent since her nineteenth birthday, and now this _stranger _without a badge is making her stand behind him at crime scenes. And Olivia asks timid questions about _boys _as if she isn't about ten years too late for the birds and the bees.

Just one more thing Etta figured out on her own, thank you very much.

As glad as she is to be part of this team, as proud as she is to be part of the Bishop legacy, she is also _so_ mad at them.

* * *

This manifests itself on a Wednesday night, after dinner in the house they are squatting in. They are sitting around a tiny, hopefully unnoticed fire, sharing a bottle of wine they pilfered from the house's long-abandoned pantry. Peter pours the wine into paper cups, and he makes a big deal about serving Etta.

"The last drink I poured you was milk in a sippy cup," he says, smiling at her.

Etta humors him with a half-smile, but it doesn't reach her eyes.

"It was juice, actually."

"What?" he asks.

"You gave me apple juice for the car ride, and you drove me to Nina's and said you'd see me very soon. That was twenty years ago."

"Sweetheart—"

"I can still taste that apple juice."

Olivia tries to step in then, asking Etta to calm down with a quiet, "Baby girl…"

"Don't call me that. I'm not a baby, and I'm not a girl. You missed that." And then she stands up and storms off to bed, leaving Peter and Olivia to watch the fire crackle sadly in the hearth.

The truth is, they did miss it, and it was the biggest sacrifice they ever made, the biggest gamble. In an act of desperation, they pinned their hopes on the future, on the wits of their telekinetic four-year-old, when their team could not prevail. After they resigned themselves to waiting out the future in amber, Peter and Olivia considered the option of bringing Etta with them. They fantasized about spending one perfect day with her, chasing her at the park, listening to her giggle, feeding her ice cream until her hands were chocolate-sticky, and then locking her and her precious mind away with theirs in amber.

To wait.

But when it came down to it, Peter declared that a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush – neither of them could fathom putting Etta's beautiful little spirit in stasis in the _hope _that they could one day resume life as normal.

And as the timer ticked down on the amber trigger, that perfect day was the last, lingering thought for both of them. For twenty years, the image of Etta's smile has been burned behind Peter's eyes, and now there's this poised young woman – who is taller and more tired, but who has that same smile – scowling at him and telling him he abandoned her.

She's not technically wrong, but she is still so, so _wrong_.

* * *

There are dark circles under Olivia's eyes at breakfast the next morning. She wants to apologize, to try to make Etta understand, but she also doesn't want to drive her further away, not when Etta's perfect, angular, so-grown-up face is the best thing she's ever seen. She explained this to Peter last night, laughing coldly into her wineglass as she reminded him how many frustrated tears they had all cried over teaching an extremely stubborn Etta to tie her own shoes.

It is Etta who reaches out first, staring into a cup of coffee as the three of them stand around the kitchen island.

"I understand that it feels like you gave me that apple juice two weeks ago, but it was a long time ago, much of which I spent wondering if you knew when you gave it to me that I'd probably never see you again."

Peter places a hand over Etta's. "God, we hoped we would."

"But?"

"But we knew there was a chance we would lose. That we would lose you."

"So you just left me?" she asks quietly.

Olivia tries to be reasonable. "We left you with the only person we knew we could trust."

"And that meant a lot to me, being four."

"Etta—"

Peter is starting to feel like she's trying to hurt him, like she's trying to hurt Olivia. And while he understands it, it's not going to fly. It wouldn't have flown when she was two, and it won't now. "There was no way to beat them. The best we could do was try and wait them out. But we didn't want _you_ to spend one moment frozen and brain dead and alone, let alone twenty years." After a beat, he adds, "It would've been even longer if you'd been in there."

"How can you say that?" Etta seethes. "You put all your eggs in the basket of a four-year-old girl. You needed _me_? I needed you! I was just a little girl! And you gave up on me, on our family … you gave up on the _world_."

"I understand why you feel like that," Olivia says, pushing her hair behind her ears. "But there was no other way. If there had been, you _have_ to know that we would've done it. We wanted so badly to stay together."

"You know, I haven't once considered amber as a viable option. Plenty of people have done it. Hell, the Secretary of State did it in '28. But I'd rather go down fighting than leave the mission for someone else to figure out and assume – quite arrogantly, I might add – that anyone would care enough to get me out later. Especially when it's this important."

Tears stream down Olivia's face. "When you have your own child, you'll understand that the pain of _missing _the last twenty years is almost _unbearable_ for me and your dad. But if we had stayed, and if we had stayed together, you would've been in so much danger."

"But I didn't have a choice."

He feels a flash of a memory, then, of Olivia dancing with Etta in their kitchen. After so many years of aimless wandering, Peter was finally part of something flawless, something beautiful. And yet he knew, watching perfect, blonde Etta mumble along to the music, that he couldn't protect them in this world. The realization hardened him, made him blind to anything beyond their safety. In that respect, he had succeeded. It is twenty years later, and they are safe.

But they are not dancing.

Peter rubs a hand over his face in frustration. "But I don't care, because you're alive. You survived, so it was worth it."

"Was it, Dad?"

"Yes! You don't remember what it was like when they came, but it was terrifying. People were being gunned down in their homes – whole families put to death. And those were just the ones they came across. They were hunting your mother like wolves." He takes a ragged breath. "If you hate me, that's okay. I can live with that. I can live with the fact that you are this amazing person, and I had nothing to do with that. But I couldn't have lived in a world without you. And neither could your mom."

Etta's hand goes instinctively to the bullet around her neck, and she mutters, "I don't hate you. I could never hate you."

She's waited too long, fought too hard, hurt too much to hate them. Not when she knows, deep down, that everything they did was done with love for her. What she'll never know for certain is what could have been. It could have been terrible, but it could've been amazing, too.

And for those what-ifs, for the life that was stolen from their family, she chooses to fight.

"I'm sorry," she says, finally.

"Don't be," Olivia offers, wanting to wrap her baby in her arms, no matter how big she is. "Too much was asked of you."

"We're so proud of you," Peter says, making the foray to her side of the island and hugging her close.

"Thanks, Dad."

He smiles at her, watery, before turning her around and placing her in her mother's arms, the two of them chuckling through tears.

"Oh, Etta, I love you," Olivia says, placing her palm sweetly on Etta's face.

"I love you, too."

Etta lets herself feel that feeling again, to be warmed by her mother's loving embrace. She lets it start to heal her; her wounds are deep and they are myriad, but here is a new beginning. A chance to be a part of something special, not just for her selfish self, but maybe also for humanity.

_Here is her family._


End file.
